Helped Blacks but Didn’t Get Credit, Koch Says

Mayor Edward I. Koch said Tuesday that the biggest disappointment of his 12 years at City Hall has been not getting credit for helping blacks.

“Many people in the black community do not perceive that I was their friend,” he told reporters during the last major press conference on his mayoral schedule.

Koch, who lost the last election to David N. Dinkins, a black, said it was he who appointed New York’s first black police commissioner, Benjamin Ward, and the first black deputy mayor for economic development, Stanley Grayson.

He said that, while he was mayor, the proportion of city civil service jobs held by minority members rose to 62% from 31%.

It was he, Koch said, who started Operation Giant Step, a kindergarten program for 4-year-olds that he said has benefited many black children.

“I believe this Administration has been more helpful to the black minority than all administrations before us,” he said. “I don’t think we got credit for it.”

Koch acknowledged that his statement during the 1988 presidential campaign that Jews “would be crazy” to vote for the Rev. Jesse Jackson contributed to his political demise.

That caused a black backlash that carried over to this year’s mayoral primary, in which Dinkins got 97% of the black vote.

Koch maintained, however, that the black outpouring for Dinkins was a matter of ethnic pride rather than an attack on him.

He said the second half of his remark about Jackson went unheeded. It was: “ . . . in the same way that blacks and supporters of black causes would be crazy to vote for George Bush.”

When asked how history would judge his record in dealing with contemporary problems such as drug addiction, AIDS and homelessness, he said: “They know that, within the confines of what a mayor can do, that I did a lot.”

After 25 years in city and federal government, Koch, 65, a former congressman and city councilman, plans to start a new career as a newspaper columnist, radio and TV commentator and guest lecturer on college campuses.